For various military applications including high speed targets such as rocket propelled missiles, high rate of fire weapons are used to project a cloud of projectiles over large spatial areas to intercept and destroy any missiles passing through the blanket or cloud of projectiles. Such guns are controlled by radar to respond very rapidly, being both positioned and fired to coincide with the direction and location of the traveling missile.
In the past multiple barrel guns have been used for this purpose that are capable of firing thousands of projectiles per minute. Such guns have used multiple barrels, either fixed or rotating, that are rapidly fired in sequence to blanket an area occupied by a target so as to increase the hit probability. However, such weapons using conventional ammunition and reciprocating firing mechanisms are inherantly limited in the maximum rate of fire.
In many earlier patents of the present inventor, David Dardick, there is provided a different type of construction for both the firing mechanism of the gun and of the ammunition that permits a much higher rate of fire than before. Such weapons permit the cartridges to be fed and ejected from the gun in a transverse direction without any longitudinal movement of the cartridges. The cartridges themselves are also differently constructed in triangular cross section, rather than round, so that they are always self-aligning in the firing chamber during high speed feeding, and the spent casings are more easily ejected from the chamber at higher speeds than before.
Earlier patents of David Dardick showing constructions of this type include the following: U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,855,931, 3,601,061, 3,572,248, 3,503,300, 3,501,998, 3,486,827, 3,467,276, 3,446,113, 3,446,111, 3,434,380, 3,041,939, 2,847,784, and 2,831,401.